Tag: spinach

I held back on the alliteration in that title – after all, I used brown bread, and British vegetables, and considered some bonus bacon. But I figured just the four Bs would be cheesy enough.

Having the time and space to make a proper breakfast feels like a funny little luxury to me. It’s the pottering around in a quiet kitchen, coffee brewing on the table while I whisk ingredients. It’s the joy of keeping one eye on what’s cooking and your mind on how the day might unfold. Breakfast is the reason I dream of having a big kitchen with lots of natural light – as much as I love the challenge of a layer cake or the satisfaction of making a complicated dinner, it’s those mornings sipping sweet tea and flipping pancakes in pyjamas that I fantasise about.

There’s a possibility it’s the wrong week to suggest making breakfast in your oven, but I’ll say this: at least it isn’t waffles. I spent Monday morning sweating away in the kitchen making waffles for breakfast, stood over the iron and in front of the oven keeping them warm and occasionally putting my head into the fridge. Worth it? Yeah, especially when I realised I had leftover crumble topping to throw on them, but I can’t say I’ll be repeating it while the weather is so warm. This recipe means you can pop it in and leave the room to avoid overheating.

It makes the most of leftovers – the half pack of mushrooms, a handful of spinach, a few slices of bread, however much cheese you’ve got kicking about – and uses the vegetables that are in season right now.

We do it like this.

Serves four, or three quite hungry people.

Ingredients

100g mushrooms, sliced
12 asparagus spears, woody ends removed and stems cut into thirds
3 large eggs
375ml milk
1 tsp wholegrain mustard
6 slices old bread, halved diagonally
A generous handful of spinach
Chunk of cheese (as much as you like! I did not get these thighs by measuring cheese)
Seasoning
Butter, for greasing

Method

Preheat your oven to 180C, and grease a medium sized baking dish.

Over medium heat in a large pan, cook the asparagus pieces and mushroom slices until just softening. As they cook, whisk together the eggs, milk, and mustard.

Remove the mushrooms and asparagus from the heat. Dip a slice of bread in the egg mixture, transfer to the baking dish, almost-standing, and layer with mushroom, asparagus and spinach, and repeat. When all the bread and vegetables are arranged in the dish, grate as much cheese as you fancy over the top. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until deep golden brown.

Can we be super honest? I’m a lazy cook. When it’s not bashing out a batch at the weekend, cooking means evening meals, and that window of time between work and bed is one that I cherish. It’s for reading, or baths, or mindlessly scrolling through Instagram. It’s not the time to create a masterpiece in the kitchen.

But there’s room for not-quite-recipes: the food you can prepare with one knife and one pan, making the most of seasonal veg at its simplest. This is one such throw-these-things-together plan, which allows you to prep tomorrow’s high-protein breakfast frittata(ish) while you eat dinner.

Did I add those ingredients just so I could have a fun title? I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t part of the equation — but mostly it’s about the snuck-in secret veggies, because there’s something weirdly satisfying about being able to tick off your five a day very swiftly by whipping up spinach and pea pesto.

What can I say? I lead a thoroughly rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle.

Honestly, this week we’re all craving green things, whether it’s because we’ve acquired a lot of chocolate or just down to the brighter skies that come with switching the clocks back, (although that always seems to mean losing an hour’s sleep).

But it’s time for fresh starts, again, and rediscovery — the “tomorrow” we were awaiting the arrival of before it’d be sensible to look to getting in shape is here. And so we shake off the darkness of winter, peeling it away like soggy shoes after a rainy commute, and we dig into recipe books, reminding ourselves what vegetables look like, and we chuck in some extras.Read More

itres of orange juice and tea. Mugs of soup and bowls of crumble. Olbas oil-drenched hankies. These are the things we’re really clutching this month, as the “back to school” cold sweeps the country, whether you’re actually at school or not.

So, September’s round up is a bit different to the usual, focusing more on what we can eat to help give our immune systems a helping hand in fighting against the sniffles. Read More

In season

So, it’s not really a matter of “in season” but it’s the season for pumpkin, right? This year, the hoopla around pumpkin seems to have come to a peak – my local supermarket was overrun with them from the first of October and, well, the telltale sign is the bizarre backlash in the media. I’ve seen for-and-against. I’ve seen pumpkin spice hate. This, on the cultural significance of it all, was a really interesting read. But more importantly, the food! One of my favourite pumpkin finds was pumpkin spice chocolate muffins with maple cream cheese frosting (Flourishing Foodie).

About

Hello there! I'm Hannah - welcome to The Dinner Bell. This here slice of the internet is dedicated to seasonal eating, particularly in the UK, with info on what to get when and a plethora of recipes to go with it. It's about food for normal people and ingredients you can get easily.

You can find out a bit more here, or get in contact here. You can even stalk what I'm reading, here!